AFV News from around the Web (Historic Edition)

Here is a collection of recent article dealing with historic AFVs. Click on the headlines to go to the full article. A word of warning, the FOX article is full of errors. We included it anyway, since it had a few interesting things in it.

DIVERS working on a project to map the wreckage of top secret D-Day tanks sunk in Poole Bay have appealed for help. The Valentine 75 Project was launched in Purbeck, last week, to find out more about the seven amphibious tanks sunk during Operation Smash – the Normandy landings rehearsal that took place off Studland almost three quarters of a century ago. Project members are now anxious to hear from anyone who may have underwater images, taken in the 1970s and 80s, of any of the Second World War vehicles, which were known as Valentine tanks.

When the producers of “Fury” planned to make a technically correct film about an American World War II tank crew’s exploits, they ran into a problem. The type of tank they wanted to use was nowhere to be found, the result of heavy casualties on the battlefield. So they had to use the wrong tank. And that’s a problem that a lot of collectors, or rather would-be collectors, of certain World War militaria can encounter. Many of the most desirable collectibles, like early tanks, airplanes and certain armaments, no longer exist except in photographs, old newsreels and the occasional museum.

(MENAFN – Gulf Times) The hulking grey war machine resembles a ship’s upturned hull, with one stumpy barrel protruding above the Iron Cross insignia. It’s a far cry from the Tiger and Panther tanks that ravaged WWII battlefields, but a sombre testimony to the start of a terrifying new chapter in modern warfare. The first German tank, the A7V, was presented to the top brass for inspection in Berlin in January 1917, only a few months after the British deployed this revolutionary weapon in France in World War I.

These are the incredibly rare photographs showing the British ingenuity that brought the dawn of the tank age and changed the Allies fortunes in the First World War. The images show triumphant British troops atop the world’s first tanks, as well as life from the inside manning the machine guns. These black-and-white photos are taken from the new book ‘Armoured Warfare in the First World War 1916 – 1918’ by Anthony Tucker-Jones and published by Pen & Sword Military. Mr Tucker-Jones said: ‘The first tanks came about through the desperate need to break the terrible deadlock in the trenches.